These Companies Are Major Brands That Are The Best (And Worst) At Using Social Media For Customer Service

It’s a given that a brand has to have a social media presence. The only problem is that some brands are really bad at it. And we aren’t just talking about obvious flubs—like when McDonald’s #McDStories hashtag prompted people to publicly bash the fast food joint—but simple bad customer service, like ignoring Tweet complaints, which has very real consequences.

According to a study commissioned by Conversocial, which manages customer service on social media for everyone from Groupon to Net-A-Porter, more than half of consumers surveyed (55 percent) were disappointed by big brands’ communication on social media.

“If people have a bad experience in-store, they will tweet it — amplifying it 100 fold,” Joshua March, CEO of Conversocial, told Business Insider. “This can have a massive negative affect.” In fact, 88 percent of consumers were unlikely to buy from a brand that ignored their complaints on Facebook or Twitter.
So who are the winners and losers on social media? In general, supermarkets, telecommunications, and retail banks were the worst offenders while restaurants and department stores had it down.

Conversocial’s study ranked how satisfied customers were with a brand’s social media presence. Most of those surveyed answered “no opinion,” which means that while a brand wasn’t doing anything wrong it wasn’t doing anything right either.

Here’s how they rank in terms of the percent of people who were satisfied with their social media interactions: